


Around the Edges

by pellucid



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 19:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1238140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pellucid/pseuds/pellucid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pair of ficlets from Porn Battle VII (January 2009)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Get the fuck in the car," she yells, pushing him into the door of an SUV while she glances over her shoulder at Catherine gaining on them at inhuman speeds. The second time Sarah Connor has saved him. He'd say he owes her again, but really, she's cost him far more than she can ever pay back.

She loses Catherine, then drives around for two hours just to be sure, out into the desert and then doubling back another way to home. She doesn't speak to him and he doesn't answer. Images race through his mind. Catherine who…isn't. John Henry who will never learn ethics, who will destroy the human race. Sarah Connor. Always Sarah.

His head starts to clear when she ushers him into the living room of what must be her house and starts telling John and the girl machine about Catherine. A T-1000, she calls her, and James catches the terrified expression that flashes across John's face for half a moment. She sends them out to keep watch, and although he knows what the girl is, he doesn't feel much safer. He knows in that moment he will never have a home again. 

"Fuck," Sarah murmurs, then turns on him. "What the hell were you _thinking_ , Ellison? What the fucking hell? You know what's coming. You know and you're working for them." She's yelling now, moving in toward him. He takes one step back, then another, then stops, grips her shoulders as she comes into his space, keeping her close but at arm's length.

"How was I supposed to know?" he shouts back. "How was she any less trustworthy than you are? At least she—"

"It," Sarah interrupts sharply. "It's a machine. You're helping it destroy the world."

"I was trying to stop it!" His fingers are tight on her arms, and she's close enough she has to look up at him. But she's still in charge here.

"I'm the one who stops it!" Her voice is filled with rage and anguish, and she wrenches out of his grip. Instinctively, he catches her wrist and pulls her back.

"Then let me help you," he says softly, relaxing his grip on her wrist. 

She inhales sharply, starts to shake her head.

"Sarah," he murmurs. She goes still, then relaxes toward him as her resistance fades. Her hair smells like smoke and gunpowder, like she's always smelled in his dreams.

He whispers her name again as she turns her face up to his, and suddenly she's kissing him. He doesn't know why. For all that he's been circling around her for years, he assumed she's never given him a second thought, but now her hands circle around his shoulders and clutch at the back of his neck. He pulls her flush against him, kisses her roughly, groans as she slides a leg between his.

"Bedroom," she breathes, her lips nipping at the shell of his ear. She takes his hand and leads him upstairs. 

Sarah is silent as she closes the door behind them, starts to unbutton his shirt. James wants to panic, wants to ask her why, wants to say he hasn't done this in a long time, not since Lila, no one but Lila in a very long time, except Sarah now, finally, smelling of gunpowder and unzipping his fly and pushing him toward the bed. 

Her body under his hands is bone and muscle, sharp angles and puckered scars whose origins he will never know. He stumbles back onto the bed, and she's on him and around him, and as she rocks against him, her hands on him like fire, he thinks this moment was inevitable. Part of a future that is always known, yet always malleable.

He comes quickly, too much exhaustion and adrenaline to hold on, and his fingers dig into the flesh of her hips as he releases against her. _You've ruined my life_ , he thinks, blood rushing in his ears and her face above his, whether his eyes are open or closed. Always Sarah.

He pulls out of her and flips her onto her back, fucking her with two fingers and rubbing his thumb roughly against her clit. He tastes the salt of her skin and watches her come hard, mouth open in a silent cry, as her clutching fingernails draw blood on his shoulders. He knows he will follow this woman to the end of the world.


	2. Chapter 2

She arrives home at 7:30, the day already heating up in the morning sun. She should give the night shift to Cameron the sleepless, but Sarah likes the long, silent hours of the stakeout. The machine posing as Catherine Weaver has disappeared. Or rather, Catherine Weaver has. The machine could be anyone or anything. When Sarah sits alone in her car at night, watching ZeiraCorp, she wonders if she'll even know when it comes for her. She should put Cameron on the night shift.

The kitchen smells of pancakes. Sarah leans against the doorjamb watching John shovel the last of his breakfast into his mouth. Cameron is waiting for him in the garage, and she's impatient. Day shift. Derek is god knows where. James—she thinks of him as "James" now, as of four days ago, though she has yet to say his name aloud—stands by the stove, watching her. 

"Bye, Mom," John says, perfunctory kiss to her cheek. 

"Breakfast?" James asks as he leaves. 

He cooks. She isn't sure where to file that information. He's been cooking for two weeks, since she snatched him from the T-1000 and yelled at him and took him to her bed. It continues to surprise her, this cooking like nothing is wrong, like his life isn't over, like she's not losing the battle with the apocalypse.

He crosses the room in three slow paces, brushes the stray hair out of her eyes. He touches her now, without permission, as of four days ago. But not in front of other people. She thinks John probably wouldn't mind; he likes James, she thinks. He likes that James is as normal as it's possible to be when you're the walking dead, that he gets up in the morning and makes pancakes. Sarah likes that James has destroyed himself; there's no more harm she can possibly inflict.

"You should eat something." His voice is soft, close to her ear. She closes her eyes.

"I think we need a new plan with ZeiraCorp," she says, focusing. Always and only on what's necessary. "No one has seen Weaver in two weeks. It could be anything now. Anywhere. We need to hit the building before it has a chance to move the AI."

He doesn't answer immediately, and she imagines him thinking. She doesn't know him well enough yet, can't quite picture what his face looks like while he's considering this. "Okay," he says after a moment, and she can't tell if it's agreement or deferral. "Now come eat breakfast."

She smiles, laughs a little, if the half-hearted exhale can be counted a laugh. "Not hungry," she says, leaning into him, resting her face against his neck. He smells like her soap. "Tired." She's not allowed to rest, but he's warm and solid and tempting, already doomed but not yet scarred.

"Hmm." His voice is noncommittal, and for a moment she expects him to sit her down at the table with a stack of pancakes. 

Instead, one hand slides around her neck, his fingers threading through her hair. The other skims down her arm and back up the side of her body, his palm firm but gentle on her breast, then trailing to the waist of her jeans. She keeps her eyes closed as her body hovers in the space between sleep and arousal.

He kisses her as he works open her jeans, his lips on her forehead, eyelid, lips, as his hand slides into her panties and just holds her there for a minute. 

"You going to fall asleep on me?" he asks. His voice is light, but as she opens her eyes she catches the shadowed expression on his face. She wonders, sometimes, what he was like before. The FBI agent with the fast track career, chasing a crazy woman who believed robots were going to destroy the world.

"I'm awake," she says, looping her arms around his neck and kissing him lazily. He tastes like coffee and maple syrup.

His fingers are achingly slow, sliding in and out of her, circling around her clit, finding a rhythm. His other hand is beneath her shirt now, teasing her right nipple through the fabric of her bra. She's closer than she thought, wet and warm and boneless. Her knees start to buckle, and his arm goes around her, pinning her between his body and the doorframe. 

"I've got you," he breathes against her skin. "Let go, Sarah. It's okay."

And this is what he doesn't understand—not yet, but he will, eventually. There is no letting go. She catches the world, but there is no one to catch her. But she's been up all night, and the kitchen smells like pancakes, and he's there and solid and just for a minute she can pretend he's safe. 

"Mmm-ahh," she cries softly as she comes. It's slow and warm, and his fingers continue gently, drawing it out as she shudders against him.

"There," he says. "Rest now."


End file.
